It was a laugh of menace, of bottomless evil, and it echoes across the shadowy corridors of the years like a childhood phantom. My earliest meeting with The Shadow was via a radio loudspeaker—quite a different medium from the originating pulps, but equally colorful. The litany is of course now legendary: "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows. . . ." The maxim that the weed of crime bears bitter fruit, intoned at the start of every program, was biblical in its sternness. The Shadow was an Old Testament avenger, a ruthless slayer of the wicked, very befitting the Depression decade of his greatest strength. Rooted to my radio on those long-ago Sunday afternoons, I listened spellbound as the filter-voiced, filter-laughing Shadow pursued the most grotesque malefactors : incredibly twisted madmen and monstrous fiends.
THE SHADOW SCRAPBOOK features:
original Shadow Contest announcement
story of how the Shadow was written
complete list of Shadow titles
illustrations from early Shadow novels
reproductions of over 48 Shadow covers including 25 in full color
complete Shadow short novel never before printed
complete chronology of Shadow radio broadcasts
complete script of first Shadow broadcast
complete six-week Shadow comic strip
Shadow movie stills, memorabilia and much, much more.
